Jen and I are spending a few days in New Jersey. When we arrived we had a present awaiting us: Becoming Vegan
This book is one of the best resources for the vegetarian-going-vegan, long-time vegan, and any person who takes even a remote interest in their health and well-being (and the health and well-being of their friends and family).
Buy this book! I cannot state it more clearly: it's cogent, full of facts - decimating, as it does, our collective assumptions about diet and nutrition (And protein, oh the protein!) -and very, very accessible.
Here are some "fun" facts:
The % of calves that never suckle from their mothers' udders is 50% - never. (Thanks to the dairy and veal industries for this.)
Male chicks (from laying hens) killed per year by suffocating, gas, or grinding in the U.S.: 200 million. (Oh, so that's what happens to the baby boy chickens. It's like reverse China.)
Pigs with pneumonia at the time of slaughter: 70 %. (Pneumonia's fun isn't it? Maybe those PETA videos about farming conditions aren't the result of "selective editing" after all.)
Proportion of all antibiotics that are used in animal agriculture: 40 %.
How about some more numbers:
10-40% of calories in most plant foods are derived from protein. Therefore, by consuming enough calories from well-balanced vegan foods, it's easy to get more than enough protein. (Get out! I guess vegans and vegetarians do actually eat protein. They're human after all.)
B-12 is a bacteria that also lives on plants, not some crazy vitamin that only (and naturally) occurs in animals. That's interesting, and easily remedied then.
Animal protein raises blood cholesterol levels, while plant protein lowers it. (Not to mention the saturated fats our fat society loves so much.)
All essential amino acids (you know, the building blocks of protein) are derived from plants. If you get any from eating nonhuman body parts that means that the animal ate a plant (or ate another animal who ate a plant)!
One medium egg provides 5.5 g protein, so someone who needs 50 g of protein (that would be most of us) would have to eat 9 eggs each day to meet their entire need for protein. Versus 1 1/4 cups - ya, that's right! - of extra firm tofu. (So much for the egg-as-"gold standard"-for-protein-quality myth.)
This could go on forever. For the vegan athlete, the young and old alike, everything you need (and everything you don't need!) is stated succinctly on each and every page of this book.
I always recommend "Becoming Vegan" as the best book out there on vegan nutrition.
I also always recommend Vegan Outreach's pamphlet "A Guide To Cruelty Free Living" as the best free vegan starter guide for solid nutrition information. I've seen some flat fallacious and irresponsible starter kits out there. The one Vegan Outreach publishes is written by a registered dietitian.
The authors of "Becoming Vegan" cowrote the American Dietetic Association's position paper on vegetarianism.
I've met Brenda Davis several times at conferences. She knows her stuff.
Too bad you two didn't make it to AR 2008 this weekend. It was a hell of a conference.
Brenda Davis RD also has a second edition of "Becoming Vegetarian" which is basically a vegan nutrition book aside from the title. It is several years more up to date than "Becoming Vegan" and has some additional useful information.
She also has a web site
http://www.brendadavisrd.com/
Thanks for the comments. I am going to look at the vegan starter kit and recommend it to people. If it is anything like "Becoming Vegan," it's a must-read.
"B-12 is a bacteria that also lives on plants, not some crazy vitamin that only (and naturally)"
What do you mean by this? Cyanocobalamin is vitamin B-12. It is not bacteria.
Very good point Clyde. Thanks for the comment!
Indeed, vitamin B-12 is "the name for a class of chemically-related compounds, all of which have vitamin activity." However, biosynthasis, which "is a vital part of metabolism," can only be accomplished by bacteria. Therefore, it is made viable by bacteria in the human body; however, different forms of the vitamin grow on plant matter originally. It doesn't naturally occur in flesh. Which means that A) vitamin B-12 deficiency in vegans occurs because we remove the vitamin from the plants during cleaning, and B) that if a nonhuman or human has B-12, it was a supplement or they got it from fresh plant matter.
Cyanocobalamin is a "common form of the vitamin...that doesn't occur in nature." It is used as a "supplement and food additive...It is converted to other forms of the vitamin which are actually used in chemical reactions in the body."